


Shipwrecked with You, or: Beware the Wrath of the Gear-Jockey Skirt

by thegiantkiller (theleaveswant)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Gen, Heist, Pirates, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-17
Updated: 2007-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/thegiantkiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part one: Kaylee is abducted by a former acquaintance and Simon attempts to come to her rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [manicmarauder88](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=manicmarauder88).



> For Swashbucklathon 2007. Precedes/precludes the Big Damn Movie. Hover for translations. Mandarin’s cobbled together from a few different sources; corrections are welcome. Thanks to hadespuppy for the beta.

“That one looks like a turtle,” Kaylee said.

“Which one?” Simon asked, squinting. They were lying side by side in the shade of a heavily slanting palm tree, but the sun was high and the sky itself almost painfully bright.

“Next to the compression coil.”

“That really doesn’t help me.”

“That one,” she raised her hand to point out a bulbous shape among the slowly drifting and deforming clouds, “right there.”

“Huh,” he said, peering up at it. “Looks more like a tortoise to me.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Not really. Tortoises live on land, so they have feet rather than flippers. And their shells are more steeply domed.”

Kaylee rolled her eyes. “Okay then, Doctor Smartypants, it’s a tortoise. Your turn.”

Simon sighed and raised a hand to his face, adjusting the damp rag he was using to cool the lump, not unlike a tortoise shell, blossoming on his forehead. When he last asked after the bruise’s colour, Kaylee had informed him that it was “rainbow.”

“Are you sure that beacon is working?”

“It’ll work. I mean, the signal’s pretty weak and this rock ain’t exactly tiny, so it might take ‘em a bit to spot it. But they’ll find us, don’t you worry.” Kaylee’s brow crinkled, but she kept her voice confident. This plan of course assumed that Serenity was in fact searching the surface. They’d been gone long enough that their absence must have become suspicious, but there was really no reason for the crew to believe that they were even still on the moon.

“I’m in no rush to leave,” Simon said drowsily.

Kaylee, dabbing the blood from her split lip, rolled her head over in the sand to look at him. “No?”

“Well,” he equivocated, eyes focused past his feet at the rolling surf, “it’s not exactly the Sihnon Astoria, but the company’s hard to beat.”

Kaylee let her hand creep like a spider across the cool rough of the sand until it found the warm smooth of his arm. Simon glanced down at the source of the touch, then raised his hand to intertwine his fingers with hers and rolled his throbbing head back up to face the sky.

She grinned. “You’re sweet when you have a head injury.”

Simon raised his free hand to point out a squishy blob of floating vapour. “There’s a pancreas,” he said.  
\---  
The last job had gone remarkably—well, perhaps “smoothly” was an overstatement, but the total number of stitches required to repair the damage was under forty, which was better than usual, and they had actually been paid, which was almost miraculous. Mal, in a gesture of painkiller-enhanced magnanimity, had endowed Kaylee with a wedge of credit and told her to fix his damn ship. That was two days ago. Today Mal (now sober) had taken Zoe and Jayne with him to secure the next job, River was helping Wash with some general cleaning and maintenance around the ship, and Simon had been enlisted to help Kaylee with the shopping (more precisely: to help carry her plunder home from the hardware emporium). At this particular moment, that meant standing amidst a bewildering array of mechanical whatsits, in front of a wall of enormous spools of wire and cable in various materials and gauges, watching her evaluate the flexibility of a length of copper.

When he noticed the tall blond man striding determinedly up the aisle towards them, Simon instinctively turned his face away in case the stranger was a habitual reader of wanted posters.

“Hey!” the man called as he approached. “It’s Kaylee, right?”

“Bester, hi!” Kaylee exclaimed, acknowledging the man with a megawatt smile of recognition.

He flailed his arms exultantly. “Man, I thought that was you! How’ve you been?”

“Great, really great! Well, pretty good anyway, I mean things can’t always be shí quán, but, you know, I’m doin’ okay. What about you?”

He nodded, chomping loudly on a wad of gum. “Oh, shiny. You still workin’ on that Firefly?”

“ _Serenity_ , yeah, it’s goin’ pretty good. And you, what are you doing?”

“I got a gig. It’s goin’ pretty sweet. As a matter of fact we got a job on for this afternoon, and the cap’n’s actually letting me help with the plannin’ on this one—hey! Would you mind taking a look at what I’ve got and tellin’ me what you think? You were always real smart with that machine stuff—I mean, you stole my job! Not that I mind or anything, that Mal was a real buzzkill.” He smiled again, flashing white teeth and what Simon supposed must pass for charm in these parts. “You got a minute?”

“Um, yeah, okay.” Kaylee turned to Simon. “You’ll be okay here by yourself for a bit?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, and the man looked him over, apparently noticing him for the first time.

Kaylee gasped, embarrassed. “Oh, I’m sorry, that was so rude. This is S—“ she caught herself on the brink of revealing his real name “Sam. Sam, this is Bester.”

“How’s it hangin’, brother?” Bester grinned and raised his hand for Simon to slap, which he did hesitantly, then frowned as Bester caught the eye of a grizzled older man standing near the warehouse’ entrance. Kaylee, busy handing her shopping basket and pinkly-scribbled lists over to Simon, did not observe the exchange.

Bester led Kaylee away towards the entrance, placing his hand familiarly on her hip (Simon frowned again). He steered her through the bar of dusty sunlight and out into the scrapyard in front of the store, and the grizzled man followed.

Outside, Bester drew Kaylee into the head-high piles of debris speckling the yard, out of sight of either the warehouse or the street. “Lemme just find a flat spot to spread out the sketches,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, then wheeled and caught hold of both her wrists.

“Hey!” Kaylee cried, giggling, “what are you--!?” She squeaked in fear when other hands—veiny, with fingers like hairy sausages—lunged into her field of vision, pulling a sack over her head and tightening it around her throat. “Sim—“ she tried to scream but a palm clamped down over her mouth through the coarse fabric, a strong arm pinned her own to her ribs, and her feet were hoisted off the ground before her lips could form the word.

Simon, who was already creeping uncertainly towards the door, broke into a run at the sound of her raised voice. He dropped the basket, which tipped on its side and spilled its bounty of accumulated clanky things musically across the cement floor.

“Kaylee!” he shouted as he burst into the bright light, but she was nowhere to be seen. He heard an engine rev, and ran for the gate at the end of the yard, skidding to a stop in the alley beyond just in time to see an olive-green mule round the far corner, with Bester’s peroxide-treated curls bobbing in the driver’s seat. He ran after the vehicle, knowing he had no chance of catching it on foot but hoping to keep it in sight until it stopped.

He pursued the kidnappers through narrow streets, taking every shortcut he dared, until he reached the seawall above the coastal settlement’s crowded marina. He stopped at the railing, lungs burning, fearing for a moment that he’d lost them, then saw the mule bumping over the planks of a slip towards a waiting zodiac. The legs of Kaylee’s jumpsuit were visible in the back, protruding from the shadow cast by the grizzled man from the hardware store. Still panting, Simon found the nearest access stairs and descended quickly to the harbour level. He dodged human and mechanical obstacles, trying to cut a direct path to the boat and head them off (what he’d do then, he wasn’t sure). Unfortunately the mule was faster; when he reached the slip it was too late, and the scoundrels were skimming across the sparkling waves with Kaylee still in their custody.

Cursing as loudly and crudely as he could, Simon cast his eyes about for some way to pursue the huài dàn. Spying an unmonitored speedboat he threw himself bodily into it, splashing water onto his clothes. He fumbled the ropes loose from the dock and gunned the engine, and the boat lurched forward into the open ocean.  
\---  
Kaylee started cursing in every language she knew from the moment Bester and his cohort carried her off, her blue streak interrupted only momentarily by an “umf” when she was thrown roughly against a hard surface like embossed metal. She struck out blindly with her fists, but sausage fingers caught her wrists and bound them together with a strip of sharp-edged plastic. She fully intended to keep on cursing until they let her go, but a hard slap across her mouth (inside the bag she couldn’t tell if it was luck or honed skill) shocked her into silence. “Any more chatter,” a man—not Bester—growled, his breath hot on her ear even through the heavy material, “and I’ll have to put a proper gag on ye. ‘Course, all’s I’ve got for gaggin’ is the socks I’ve been wearin’ for nigh on a month, an ye wouldn’t like that, now, would ye?” She suffered the rest of the ride without a word.

The rough road and poor shocks of the mule (she assumed, from the chug of the engine) tossed her around like a loose washer, and she squirmed to avoid touching the brute who’d bound her each time a sharp corner sent her lurching into his solid, sweat-smelling frame. Neither he nor Bester said a word.

Choking back her terrified rage, Kaylee tried to still her mind and concentrate on the route the mule was taking so that she could find her way back to Simon if she managed to escape. She bumped into the back of the seat as the mule’s nose tilted steeply down, then leveled out and rattled steadily over a bumpy surface. The smell of salt, which pervaded the entire town, was particularly acute here and she heard splashing beneath the rumble of engines. A harbour?

Her suspicion was given support when the mule stopped and she was once again lifted up and deposited bodily on a hard surface, because this one rocked violently and sent a sloshing of water over the side to soak her tank top and the bag on her face. The boat rocked again as each of the two men climbed on board and continued to wobble as a voice she hadn’t heard yet grunted irritably. “The rut is this?”

“Some gear-jockey skirt Bester said ter grab. Says we need her to do the job.”

“That so? I thought you said you could do this, Bester.”

“No, I can!” The boat wobbled as he hedged, and there was a scraping noise of rope on wood. “Just there’s this one tricky bit, and I can’t be in two places at once, and you and Garth’ll have your hands full. Besides, this girl knows engines, I mean really _knows_ ‘em. With her on board we can be in and out in no time flat.”

“Captain?” The sausage-fingered man asked, and during the pause before the new man spoke again a gull screamed.

“Bring her along. If we have to, we can always dump her.”  
\---  
It took a couple of near-spills for Simon to get the hang of the primitive motor boat, but soon he was skipping lightly over the waves in a targeted pursuit. His original plan was to overtake them, but logic prevailed (he was outnumbered and unarmed, and while he used to be a strong swimmer he was out of practice and didn’t know Kaylee’s skill level, and either way they were now well beyond reach of land) and he was now intent on tailing the zodiac to its destination and attempting to retrieve Kaylee by stealth.

It wasn’t long before the sparkling bulk of a luxury cruiser rose into view above the curve of the horizon. The zodiac adjusted their course to come in at a more obtuse angle, taking advantage of a calm stream in the turbulent froth of the ship’s wake. Simon did the same. The kidnappers appeared to give no thought to being followed.

The cruiser was tall and monstrously fat, easily equal in size to the town from which they’d just come, and the zodiac slipped quietly into its sprawling shadow. Simon squeezed the throttle, urging the boat into the darkness after them—but the engine balked, sputtered and went dead.

Drifting suddenly without power, Simon tried irritably to restart the engine but to no avail. He checked that every line and wire that he could see was properly connected (this was not the anatomy he knew), then tapped his knuckles against the rusted metal fuel tank. It rang hollowly. He looked for a spare container. There wasn’t one. There was, however, a single cracked wooden paddle. Sighing, Simon picked up the paddle and settled himself in the bottom of the boat, where he could most easily alternate his strokes to maintain a steady course.

He paddled into the gap between the hovering ship and the ocean’s surface, drawing close to where the zodiac, now unmanned, had been tethered beneath the mouth of one of the massive fans that kept the vessel aloft (now blessedly silent). He tied his boat to the cruiser independently, then stepped unsteadily over the inflated wall of the zodiac to its rigid floor and hauled himself up gingerly between the stationary blades into the bowels of the yacht.

Simon found himself in a circular horizontal channel, slightly too short for him to stand upright, curving gently upwards at the far end. Water was pooling on the floor and the walls were spotted with rust. Hearing a muffled echo of voices, he crept down the damp passage and then navigated a series of open doors and hatches, pausing at every mechanical clank. A whoop of triumph rang ahead and Simon advanced more quickly, freezing with his back against the wall of a loudly whirring room. From inside, a gruff and commanding voice called for quiet. “Bester, get this stuff loaded up. Garth, close up the grate. Let's hit the waves.”

“What about the girl?”

“She’ll get what she deserves.”

At that moment Bester came around the corner, a heavy crate in his arms. Instinctively Simon threw out a fist, connecting with the bridge of his sun-bronzed nose and sending him staggering back against the far wall, but not before the inept mechanic had time to bleat a startled “Hey!”

In the space of a heartbeat Simon was sprawled on his knees, a meaty hand crushing the tendons in his neck and forcing him to arch backwards in pain. From here he was dragged through the door into the room where they’d been talking earlier and thrown onto the floor, landing hard on his forearms. He tried to push himself upright, but a solid kick just below his sternum crumpled him up again.

“Simon!” Kaylee cried, a mixture of concern and disbelief.

“Zhè shì shénme làn dōngxī?” A voice above him inquired suspiciously. “Who is this hùndàn?”

“He was in the hardware place when we grabbed Kaylee,” Bester said, caressing his swollen nose. “He must have followed us.”

“What did I tell you?”

“Cap’n, I didn’t—“

“Load the ruttin’ boat. Garth, get him up.” The thug hauled him to his feet to face the speaker, a man about his height with a dark ponytail and gold earrings as thick as pencils. “What’s your name, stranger?”

“ Nǐ qù sǐ!” Simon spat.

“Leave him alone!”

The thieves’ leader cast Kaylee a warning glance. “Don’t start. You’ve been very helpful and I’d hate for our relationship to go sour now.”

“If you hurt her—“

“You’ll what? No really, what will you do?” The captain laughed and punched him in the face. Garth let go of his shoulders as he swung, so the blow knocked him reeling . . . right into the steam-slick doorframe, where his forehead connected with a fleshy smack before he slid to the floor. He saw the pirates’ boots shuffle and heard Kaylee shriek—then he saw and heard nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two: When Simon's rescue attempt goes south, it's up to Kaylee to get them out safely.

The pirates did not acknowledge Kaylee again until they were well out to sea, when the apparent leader said over the hum of the engine, “Let’s see what we have here.” He loosened the drawstring and yanked the bag from her head. Kaylee flinched from the sudden light stabbing into her head, then from the calloused fingers clearing her hair away from her face. She was faced with a dark-haired man in his early forties, ruggedly handsome but with a disconcerting brightness in his eyes.

“Well. Pretty thing,” he said. “At least we should still be able to find a use for her, if she can’t do the job.”

Kaylee gulped. The man frowned and spoke over his shoulder. “Bester, did you even think of _asking_ this young lady to help us?”

“Uhh . . .” Bester licked his lips. “No?”

He nodded, unsurprised. “In that case, Miss, I must apologize heartily on behalf of both myself and my crew. Were it in my power, I would see you returned immediately to land; however, we have only a limited window in which to perform this operation so I’m afraid turning around is not an option at this juncture. Since you are already in our company, it would be only polite of you to lend us a hand. You will be compensated fairly, I assure you. How does that sound?”

Kaylee stared at the man until he spurred her with an “hm?” sound, then nodded. “èi um, that sounds very reasonable.”

“Tǐng hǎo.” The captain smiled in approval, showing gold teeth. “One more thing: if you try to cause any trouble, Garth there—” he gestured at the thug from the hardware store, a neckless man with stubble covering his entire head save for a small ring around each eye and a handful of white-worm scars, who was currently driving the boat “—will cut your face so badly not even the most ambitious cosmetic surgeon would dare attempt to reconstruct it.”

She winced.

“I’m just kidding!” The captain laughed, inviting her to join him. “No, Garth’s a pussycat. I’ll do it myself.” He waved to Bester. “Tell her what we need.”

Bester shifted to sit next to Kaylee, pulling from his pocket a handful of crude schematic diagrams, and began to explain the operation.

The target, a luxury cruiser, was playing host to an unofficial conference of black-market jewel merchants, who being very rich were naturally cautious to the point of paranoia. The captain had been engaged to retrieve a particular lot of goods by one of the owner’s supposed allies, who had informed him of the booty’s probable location in a secret vault beneath the engineering deck.

The decision had been made to approach the vault through the ship’s engine. They would get inside through one of the hundreds of fans that kept the cruiser aloft while it was in its 72-minute dormant cycle, then disable it from inside to prevent it reactivating and turning them all into coleslaw. They would also need to deactivate the ship’s internal sensors to avoid attracting the attention of security personnel, and time their movements to coincide with the cyclic operation of the surveillance cameras, which could not be bypassed without tripping alarms. If all went to plan, they would be in and out before the maintenance crew made their next scheduled inspection of the unit. Bester, to his credit, knew what to do—he just didn’t have a clue how.

Getting inside was easy. Getting through the fan duct to the bypass hatch was easy. Doctoring the massive vessel’s nervous system so that it wouldn’t notice their passage was less easy, thanks to Bester’s hovering and helpful comments while Kaylee tried to attune her hearing to the rhythm of the unfamiliar machine (the engine was in good repair, but it sounded . . . congested, like a cholesterol-clogged heart).

“So this blue wire is for the ceiling motion detectors. We gotta pull that one at the junction or the alarms’ll go off. That purple-and-white one, that controls the fan inhibitor. We don’t want to even touch that one.”

“But that—“ Kaylee began, tracing the wires to their sources with her eyes, then hesitated. “Yeah, of course. Pass me that screwdriver?”

They managed to get to the access point and into the vault with no problems. Kaylee did most of the work. While they were waiting for Garth and the captain, who had entered the vault via a pressure hatch near the ceiling, to return with the loot, Bester moved to sit on the floor next to where Kaylee casually inspected the ship’s water filtration system.

“Look, um, Kaylee . . . I’m real sorry about before. It’s—I was just nervous about the job, worried I couldn’t do it right and the captain would have my neck, and then I saw you in that hardware store and I was like ‘sweet! Kaylee can do this!’ I really didn’t think about it. And I’m sorry if you got scared or hurt.”

Kaylee looked hard at the blonde mechanic. His profound simplicity, while irritating, was an almost refreshing contrast to the denseness of her current, intellectually better-endowed infatuation. “Apology accepted.”

He grinned. “Shiny! You know, I was thinking . . . maybe when we’re done here, I could make it up to you? Get a bottle of saki, a couple of pizzas, find a nice spot, and then . . . who knows?”

Kaylee fought to disguise an involuntary snort. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“Shiny,” he said again.

“Bester, that captain: he’s a little bit . . . feng le, isn’t he?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment the man in question returned through the hatch and gently lowered the crate Garth passed down to him. The momentary flash of fear in Bester’s eyes told her all she needed to know.

“Here we are,” the captain said, rotating the combination locks and opening the lid. Inside were an unknown number of stacked, velvet-lined trays. The captain tenderly lifted a thin chain from the top tray and held it up, sparkling, to the light.

“What is that? Diamonds?” Kaylee asked.

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“No,” she said hastily, “It’s real pretty. Just, diamonds ain’t exactly rare, are they? Compressed carbon’s a byproduct of the terraformin’ process; I can’t think of but four or five worlds _don’t_ got major diamond veins.”

The captain chortled richly. “Oh, they’re nothing special now, but back on Earth-that-was, diamonds were held real precious. And _these_ babies are antiques, real treasures of the era.”

Garth dropped out of the hatch beside him. “We got it, boss?”

“We got it.”

The thug whooped merrily. “Skiing lessons, here I come!” Bester shot his hand into the air in a gesture of victory.

“Alright, cool it,” the captain said, relocking the case. “Bester, get this stuff loaded up. Garth, close up the grate. Let's hit the waves.” Bester hefted the box and carried it out of the room, back the way they’d come.

“What about the girl?”

“She’ll get what she deserves. Full quarter share for her rudely-demanded participation, what do you think of that?”

Kaylee opened her mouth to tell him that was “real generous”, but was overridden by clatter in the hallway. Like a hundred-kilogram cat, Garth lunged around the corner and returned with a man in his talons. “Simon!” Kaylee cried, recognizing his prey.

“Zhè shì shénme làn dōngxī?” The captain spat. “Who is this hùndàn?”

“He was in the hardware place when we grabbed Kaylee,” Bester said, staggering into the room and groping at his nose. “He must have followed us.”

“What did I tell you?”

Bester turned beet red. “Cap’n, I didn’t—“

“Load the ruttin’ boat. Garth, get him up.” The thug hauled Simon to his feet to face the captain. “What’s your name, stranger?”

“Nǐ qù sǐ!”

“Leave him alone!” Kaylee demanded, and saw the captain’s jaw tense.

“Don’t start. You’ve been very helpful and I’d hate for our relationship to go sour now.”

“If you hurt her—“ Simon growled, and Kaylee felt her heart swell with affection.

“You’ll what? No really, what will you do?” The captain laughed, then raised his fist. Simon spun away from the blow and hit his head on the frame of the door. Kaylee shrieked and reached for him as he slid to the floor, then skittered away when the captain turned his rage on her.

“You did this!” He said, spit flying from his curled lips. Garth backed away, and this frightened her more than anything. “I’m going to flay you skin from bone, you treacherous little bitch!”

Kaylee grabbed the nearest object, a pair of wire-clippers, and held them threateningly in front of her. The captain, unimpressed by her weapon, took a step closer. “Wait!” she cried, lunging for an open panel. She pinched the purple-and-white wire into a loop between her fingers and held the open clippers against it. “Move one muscle and I’ll mulch us all.”

He paused. “What was that?”

“You heard Bester. I cut this wire, that fan goes on. We left every door open on the way in. Suction’ll pull us all back the way we come like dandelion fluffs and spit us out again as a fine mist.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” She tightened her grip on the clippers and the blade bit plastic. “Him and me, you’re going to let us out of here safely. You can keep your treasure, you can keep your secrecy. But we’re leaving and you’re not going to stop us.”

“Well. Those are bold words, and I’m quite sure you do mean them. But how do you propose to leave, when the upholding of your threat relies on you not moving from that spot?”

“I warned you,” Kaylee said, and cut the wire.

The pirates flinched, evidently expecting to be hauled bodily from the room into a sudden vacuum, and stayed flinching when it registered that this was not happening. What was happening was a hellish blare of sirens.

“Oops,” Kaylee smirked, although she doubted they could hear her. They could, however, hear the chorus of shouting from above and the rattle of boots on grating as a team of guards moved in on them.

The captain swore and waved Garth to follow him out to intercept them. As soon as they were gone Kaylee leapt up and began to drag Simon (who was unconscious but not bleeding) back to the boat. She paused only to retrieve Bester’s tool belt, which he’d abandoned, and buckle it tightly around her waist.

She met Bester coming back up the fan duct, asking what the rut was going on. As soon as she heard him coming, she tucked a wrench from the belt against her forearm. “What’s with all the noise? Who is this dude, and where’s the captain?”

Kaylee lowered Simon gently to the damp ground and straightened up. “Well, y’see, there’s a very simple explanation for all of those things.”

“What?”

“Here,” she said, “let me show you,” and pulled up her shirt to expose her breasts. With Bester distracted, she swung the wrench as hard as she could. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. “I’m sorry,” she said, stooping to kiss his forehead, then finished hauling the doctor to the point of egress.   
\---  
“You think there’s any strawberries on this island?” Kaylee asked later, when the sun had begun to descend slowly towards the impossibly distant horizon.

“I doubt it,” Simon said. “Too tropical. Mangoes, maybe.”

“I’m going to go see what I can find,” she said, rising to her feet and brushing sand from her back and thighs. “You’ll be okay here on your own?”

“Provided nobody else tries to kidnap you, I should be alright.”

She laughed, combing her fingers through her salt-crusted hair. “Thank you for the rescuing, by the way.”

Simon grimaced. “Such as it was. Really, I should be the one thanking you.” Kaylee blushed. “How did you get us off that ship, anyway?”

“Feminine wiles,” she said cryptically and started up the beach towards the trees.

“Kaylee?” Simon said, pushing up onto one elbow.

“Yeah?” She turned around to face him.

“Don’t go too far, okay?”

She bestowed on him another of her beatific and ever-more-beautiful smiles. “I won’t.”

Simon lay back down in the sand, raising one hand to give the treasure chest at his side a reassuring pat.


End file.
